The problem is that when I ask Sue to speed up enough to canter, she tightens her body in fear and we go into that wonderful gait that only gaited horse people know...the gait where every leg is out of sync with all the other legs.  It's called anti-rhythm. "Transitions," I thought.  We are having a hard time with transitions...even when I ask her to speed up just with a faint higher level of energy. First I thought that asking Sue to canter in the round pen would be the…

Dogs are nothing to worry about. We are used to dogs. I rode Sue today at home. We went further than we ever have before.  We were accompanied by our nice Lena dog. She's a senior German Shepherd.  Sue and I were doing our ground games when I noticed that Lena was trying to herd Sue.  Lena has never done that before.  I yelled at her and she slunk away. Sue and I were at the furtherest away from home than we ever have been. Lena was right besides us, circulating amoung…

Tuck and Spurt is a new term I came up with tonight to describe something Sue does. When she gets nervous or fearful, she tenses, her rear end tucks in and she spurts forward.  This isn't a good thing.  It would be a good thing if we were in a starting gate ready to chase down a cow.  As we are riding along and I ask her to go forward, I might "overask" and she'll tense all up...tuck and spurt.  You might imagine this just destroys the transition that I am asking for. …

I don't know whether or not you've noticed this, but ususally the title pertains to either Sue or I.  Today, it really is my title. We were in a nice sized 3 hour clinic this morning at Pine Dell.  There were 9 wonderful horses in the clinic.  Sue is getting better with her claustrophobia right along with my fear termination. But, we still have a problem going between horses while we are trying to stay at a consistent gait on the wall.  While we are doing that, other horses are…